SEE OUR PLAYBOOK ON HELPING CUSTOMERS WORK REMOTELY AND SECURELY
The work of MSPs is more critical now than ever before as entire companies make the unprecedented and quick shift to working remotely. Your customers will be relying on your team to make sure their devices are operating securely outside the normal corporate network, as working from home becomes typical.
I recently co-hosted a webinar with Gary Pica, CEO and founder of the MSP TruMethods, where we discussed strategies for gaining and maintaining clients during these uncertain times. Gary summed up the situation succinctly: we’re in a #survivethenthrive situation right now. For MSPs, it’s your job to help your customers do just that, and at Liongard, we’re also focusing on helping our MSP partners do the same.
Embrace the New Normal
Remote working will be more accepted as a permanent option once the dangers of coronavirus let up. The best approach is to face it head-on with clear plans and procedures for remotely managing the changing environment and maintaining proper security for all of your customers, no matter how or where they work.
Priority #1: Your Customers
If you haven’t already, you need to reach out to every one of your customers—en masse and also, if possible, individually. During the webinar, we laid out some key points for MSPs during these conversations, including:
- Show empathy for your customers and their unique situations.
- Provide them with valuable information, such as what you’ve seen other businesses do or what you’ve learned through your data and recent tickets.
- And perhaps most importantly, make sure security is up-to-date with all of your customers’ remote workers.
At the end of the day, your customers will remember how you react, adapt, and serve them during this stressful and chaotic time.
Develop Your Remote Playbook with Liongard
MSPs can use the data, automation, and custom alerting of Liongard to quickly pivot during this crisis. We’ve developed a Remote with Liongard Playbook to guide you through the process of getting your clients up and running in secure remote work environments. If you haven’t already done so, your MSP should develop its own well-defined and pre-established procedures for maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer systems, and you’re welcome to leverage our recommendations.
Some of the topics we cover in the playbook include:
Step 1: Performing a quick client assessment
For each client:
- Determine if they are “remote ready”.
- Identify all the key applications and systems in use.
- Determine the baseline requirements on remote connectivity.
- Identify how your client’s security posture will be impacted with these new requirements.
- Take care to identify exceptions and unique requirements.
Step 2: Reviewing Liongard Roar to Guide You
The data available in Liongard Roar can greatly help you get a handle on your customers’ needs and monitor security issues closely. Roar’s inspectors regularly inspect systems and maintain a historical record of configurations and changes, allowing you to view a timeline of events and pinpoint issues.
Liongard can be used to review and address the following:
- Firewall rules
- VPN configuration and access
- Productivity and communication tools used by customers
- Device provisioning and de-provisioning
- User and Group Membership
- Malware issues
- Compliance frameworks your customers are subject to
- Plus much more
Take advantage of the Custom Actionable Alerts available in Liongard to set alerts on anything. You’ll have peace of mind knowing that system security is being monitored closely, but you won’t have to dig through data to find issues—tickets will be sent automatically to your PSA or ticketing system. The valuable time this frees up can be spent on maintaining communication with your customers and providing better service during this “new normal” we’re all adapting to. And in cases where you have to do more with already busy team members, this a great efficiency tool to help you power through.
For thorough guidance to help you more efficiently and effectively manage your customers in their new working environments, check out the complete Remote with Liongard Playbook. Together, we’ve got this!